Derek Draper, upset by this morning's Guardian online article about him, has threatened to sue its author, David Hencke, and the political blogger, Guido Fawkes, for libel.
In a lengthy reaction to the piece on the LabourList website, Draper refers to it as a smear and also accuses Henke of colluding with Guido, who repeats the allegations against Draper here.
This storm-in-a-teacup dispute turns on a sentence on Draper's website saying: "I have an MA in clinical psychology and spent three years in Berkeley, California, training full time to be a psychotherapist."
Hencke and Guido see this as significant because it suggests that Draper studied at the Berkeley campus of the University of California. In fact, Draper's studies were at the Wright Institute in Berkeley.
And why is it a story anyway? History, I guess. Draper spent four years in the mid-1990s as spin-doctor for Peter Mandelson and now edits the pro-New Labour LabourList site.
Moreover, in 1998, while working as an independent lobbyist, he was taped boasting to an undercover reporter from The Observer that he and a colleague could sell access to government ministers and create tax breaks for their clients, a scandal dubbed "Lobbygate".
So what is Draper planning to do? He writes: "I have instructed my lawyers to consider what legal action I should take and to prepare a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission."
I think Draper would do better to contact The Guardian's readers' editor and, meanwhile, perhaps he should state the unvarnished truth on his website.
But what strikes me about this - with the greatest of respect to a colleague I admire - is, so what? And, of course, you may well ask, why then have I devoted this posting to it?
Answer: it illustrates the mundanity of much inside-the-beltway editorial material. It reminds us that we have stupid libel laws (what hurt to what reputation, Derek?).
And it's also a warning that we need to rise above blogospherical tit-for-tat hot air (does it not, Guido?), if we are to build really useful public service journalism on the net.
